Rachel McManus has just started at the New Zealand Alarm and Response Ministry. One of the few females working there, she is forced to traverse the peculiarities of Wellington bureaucracy, lascivious colleagues, and decades of sedimented hierarchy. She has the chance to prove herself by investigating a suspected terrorist, who they fear is radicalising impressionable youth and may carry out an attack himself on the nation's capital.  In 1981, a top spy misplaced a briefcase in the Aro Valley. All it contained were his business cards, a diary of scurrilous gossip, three mince pies, two fruit pies, the NZ Listener, and a Penthouse magazine. Unfortunately for him, the briefcase was discovered by the son of a prominent political journalist. Brannavan Gnanalingam's savage new novel, A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse looks at modern day spies in New Zealand. Instead of 'Reds Under the Bed', the new existential threat is Islamic terrorism - and the novel looks at a very New Zealand response to a global issue. 

Author

Brannavan Gnanalingam

Brannavan Gnanalingam is a critically-acclaimed novelist from the Hutt Valley, New Zealand. His previous novel Credit in the Straight World about a small town finance company collapse drew comparisons with A Confederacy of Dunces and Charles Dickens, whilst his other books have examined Kiwis travelling in Paris and West Africa. This, his fourth novel, is his first set in Wellington. He hopes - one day - to write a novel about cricket.

Country of Origin
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Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Blog #amreading A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse, Brannavan Gnanalingam
Karen Chisholm
Monday, April 10, 2017
ISBN
9780473356347
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